


Practically Home

by bees_stories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean loves his car, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Pre-Series, Sick!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:59:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dean is sick and tired he takes refuge in the one place that's practically home. Contains crude language and sexual imagery.<br/>A/N: Written for the hurt-comfort bingo prompt: 'comfort food or item' (wild card) and the hoodie_time prompt: 'Dean is on his own, sick, and he takes refuge in the Impala'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Practically Home

***

_How can he feel homesick when he barely knows what it feels like to have a home of his own?_

Dean doesn't know. What he does know is he's sick. He's tired. And he can't stand being in a shithole motel for five more minutes, because he needs something that he's never really had. What he does know is that if he stays he's going to put his fist through the wall out of pure frustration. 

He stares down at the lurid pink and green floral bedspread and shudders to think of what sort of bodily fluids permeate it. The motel is attached to a greasy spoon truck stop and doubles as a hooker's rent-a-pad. Even now, on the other side of the wall, some John is getting his rocks off. Loudly. He's grunting and groaning in time with the crash of the headboard against the flimsy sheet-rock wall, and it seems like he's never going to stop.

The hooker is encouraging him to wind it up, shouting 'Yeah, baby' and 'Fuck, yeah, harder'. Dean wishes she'd get some new dialogue. Maybe throw in the occasional 'Right there!' and a few 'Oh, ohs'. Or at least deliver her lines with more heart-felt conviction. Because, truth be told, she sounds bored, like she's on autopilot, and if he has to listen to someone having sex, then he'd prefer it if everyone was enjoying themselves. 

He coughs, a racking, chest-rattling explosion that leaves him breathless and gasping. He glances upwards at the dust-covered filter vent and wonders when the last time the heating system was maintained. Probably never, if everything else in the room is anything to go by. Awesome. He's probably being exposed to Legionnaire’s Disease. He can't remember what exactly what that is, except it's bad, and people – especially people who are old or already sick – died from it. 

The sudden onset of the flu had caught Dean flat-footed. If he'd started feeling miserable a few miles sooner, he could have stopped at a nice, clean motor court in the town he'd blown through. Instead, he'd barreled past the mom and pop diner and the five and dime, wanting to put as much distance as he could between himself and the campground where a pissed off poltergeist, (Were there any other kind? he wondered absently.) had been making the campers' lives a misery. It hadn't done much for him either, shredding his gear and leaving him in an ugly mood. Not even salting its bones had helped, which should have been the first clue that he was getting sick. Warming his hands over the bones of the restless dead always cheered Dean up. 

The coughing bout makes Dean's head reel. He collapses onto the bed and stretches out, too tired to even pull off his jacket. He covers his head with one of the lifeless pillows. It doesn't do much to blot out the sounds of the hooker and her John, and it makes it hard to breathe, so after a minute he flings the pillow across the bed and stares up at the water-stained ceiling just in time to see a mammoth cockroach climb out from a crack in the plaster. 

"Sonofabitch!" Dean rolls off of the bed and onto his feet so fast that his flu-compromised brain can't compensate. He pitches over onto his knees and interrupts a column of ants marching single file across the threadbare carpet. 

If he's about to die there is no way it's going to be in a dump like this. Dean sucks in another labored breath and clambers to his feet, wary of whatever else might still be lurking. Fearing spiders, he knocks his boots hard against the nightstand before pulling them on, and without bothering to tie them, he grabs his keys and gets out. 

Baby is parked just outside. He leans against her hood, breathing in air that is clean and cool enough to be bracing. It hurts his lungs, but he doesn't really care. It's a good pain, purging the motel room sludge out of his system, so he rides through it until another wave of shivers from his fever makes him go weak at the knees. 

He takes refuge inside the Impala, using his jacket for a blanket as he curls up on the backseat. As he alternately shivers and sweats, Dean remembers being a little kid, Dad driving endless miles as they migrated from town to town, job to job, and Sammy sacked out with his head against Dean's arm, using him as a pillow. At first it'd been strange, the constant, rootless, traveling, but gradually he'd gotten used to being lulled to sleep by the thrum of the engine, sometimes accompanied by Dad singing softly to the radio. Now the thought of it comforts him and Dean gradually begins to relax. Happy memories of his boyhood wanderings fill his mind and he lets go of consciousness and fades into sleep. 

When he wakes up the next morning, the sun is just starting to rise. Dean is stiff as a board. He still feels like ten miles of bad road; furred tongue, scratchy throat, a dull ache in his head, and weak enough that a stiff breeze will probably knock him on his ass. His skin is as sticky as the motel bathroom's worn linoleum counter top, but his fever feels like it might be down a couple of degrees so he decides to chance driving and head back to the little town. 

Ten miles down the road there's a Pump and Go. Dean stops long enough to top up his tank and buy coffee and medicine and a surprisingly decent apple fritter. At least he thinks it'd be decent if his taste-buds were working. The dough is loaded with chunks of apples and there's lots of frosting and cinnamon over the top. Two miles after driving past a grain silo and the local farmer's supply he rolls into town. 

There's activity at the diner, no surprise there, in a farm town people start their days early. But there are other signs of life too, people unlocking doors to their businesses and greeting each other good morning. The 'vacancy' sign is lit in front of the motor court. Dean pulls in. He's welcomed by a matronly-looking woman who had been busy watering her flowers. She looks him up and down with concern and asks if he's okay.

Dean gives her a fake smile and then he shrugs. "A rough couple of days, that's all. But thanks for asking," he replies and then he realizes that he means it and he smiles for real even as his throat starts to close up. He's genuinely touched by the woman's show of concern for a stranger. 

"You need anything, you just dial '0' and we'll fix you up," the woman, Annie, says and then she gets Dean his key and points the way to his unit. 

He barely makes it in time. As he unlocks the door and lets himself in, Dean feels his knees start to buckle. He goes straight for the bathroom and loses his breakfast. Too much activity too soon. Despite that, he strips off his clothes and climbs into a hot shower. He has to lean against the tiles to stay upright, but it's good to feel clean, especially when he thinks of the guests at the No Tell Motel. He doesn't want to contaminate this room with anything he'd picked up there. 

He doses himself with flu medicine and then climbs naked between clean sheets, resting his head on fluffy pillows that smell faintly of fabric softener. It doesn't make sense, and maybe he needs to think about it later, but the weird thing is, Dean thinks to himself as he looks up at a freshly painted, bug-free ceiling; as nice and clean and homey as the room is, it's not nearly as comforting as the backseat of the Impala.

end


End file.
